16 hours ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Ex-Rangers chief Craig Whyte's floundering YouTube channel
Mr Whyte borrowed £26.7m against future season ticket sales in order to acquire the club.
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Soon after the takeover Rangers stopped paying PAYE and VAT, leading to a £9m tax bill from HMRC which put the company into administration.
Liquidators were appointed after the revenue rejected a proposed Company Voluntary Agreement (CVA) and Rangers were admitted to the fourth division of Scottish football. Whyte was declared bankrupt in 2015.
Mr Whyte has since released a book, Into the Bear Pit, about his ownership and begun hosting an investment channel on YouTube.
However, all may not be what it seems.
On social media the former Rangers owner boasts of having "50k+ subs YouTube".
Acequisition, the channel in question, does indeed have 51.4k subscribers.
However, Mr Whyte's channel isn't doing too well in the viewership stakes.
The most recent video, posted 11 days ago, has just 41 views, while one posted two months entitled 'how to legally pay zero tax' has amassed just 193 in that time.
Craig Whyte's YouTube channel (Image: YouTube) The channel was not founded by Mr Whyte and Hector Earley, the other 'creator' listed on the channel but by James Domenic Floreani AKA Jayconomics.
In July last year Jay announced that he was leaving YouTube, with 'new creators' taking over the channel.
He said: "I will be handing over the channel to people who I think will bring you interesting finance and business content - you'll get to meet them in just a second. For anyone who is wondering, one thing no one can say is that I didn't put my money where my mouth was. I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars investing in companies and the people running them. It has also taught me just how brutal and humbling the small cap market can be - one minute you are on top of the world, the next you've lost it all.
"These expensive lessons I've learned throughout these last four years have made me stronger, more focused, a heck of a lot smarter, and given me a much better perspective on how things work. It's been a time of healing, personal growth, tough questions, and rough lessons learned.
"Over the past year I've been focused on God, family, healing from within using circadian biology principles, and living in alignment with my purpose. Though I will have to rebuild financially, I am in a much better place mentally, spiritually and physically than I was during my time on YouTube.
"All that said, I'd like to thank each and every viewer, supporter and critic of Jayconomics throughout the last four years. I truly wish each and every one of you the best."
In April of this year Mr Floreani was found to have breached securities laws in Alberta, Canada between November 2020 and March 2022 by posting recommendations for stocks on social media including YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), Patreon, Instagram, Discord, and Facebook without disclosing he and his company Jayconomics Inc had been paid to do so.
The court found he was paid $787.50 for a video about a tech firm called Tenet, as well as 20,000 restricted shares in the company Gold Mountain, $84,000 from Levitee Labs, and $6,300 from Sekur.
Penalties are yet to be handed down.
Mr Whyte was banned from being a company director for 15 years for his part in the collapse of Rangers.
In 2017 the former owner was cleared of fraudulently taking over the club.
He dropped a case of malicious prosecution against the Lord Advocate in 2023.
